Presenting Architectural Project to Clients

jcox_hamilton · January 28, 2015, 6:40pm

First, I have not used Unreal at all. I do use 3ds to create renderings and animations of architectural projects.

My question is, how do you show your Unreal projects to your clients? From what I have read on the Unreal site, you can create a video of yourself walking through the Unreal project, but that is basically the same as an animation using 3ds . I want my client to have the freedom to walk anywhere inside the Unreal project, not on a set path.

Is there a way my client can ‘walkthrough’ the Unreal project without purchasing Unreal? In other words, is there a ‘viewer’ for Unreal?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I cant find documentation on this issue. I don’t want to purchase (or learn) Unreal if my client can not walk through the project on his own.

anonymous_user_f70d3582 · January 28, 2015, 7:10pm

you could just package you level into a standalone game, that way people can walk around your level freely and wouldn’t need the editor.

hope that helps:)

anonymous_user_923c79df · January 28, 2015, 8:22pm

I personally prefer a cinematic to show such stuff (probably you could do both -> a cinematic + free walking) But anyway, as already mentioned, package your game: https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/Basics/Projects/Packaging/index.html

anonymous_user_3965d48c · January 29, 2015, 3:39am

There are a few options besides flythroughs and screenshots. You can package the final product and ship it in these formats: PC game (best graphics, plus VR support), iOS or Android mobile game (lower graphics), or a “HTML5” web build, which is the mobile quality with a large download size considering its temporary life. Other options that I haven’t tried include TeamViewer (or other) remote access to the game hosted on your computer, or making a custom server thingy that hosts the game and streams it to the client whenever they like.

cadviz · April 22, 2015, 6:23am

2 questions jumped up :

How much the archviz quality would be on Android…!!? bad OR would it (at least) make the client pleased with the final result ?
Where can I find a start point (a tutorial would be better) to be involved with presentation on Android…?
Best Regards

anonymous_user_3965d48c · April 22, 2015, 7:23pm

Compared to a gaming PC, Android will look less than desirable, and you’d have to make sure that people are only using it on the latest android phones that can give the best performance. No matter what, you’ll miss out on a lot of reflection graphics and whatnot. The clients we are working with are still interested in the app, but we are trying to push the VR experience as the main product.
Just look at the Android documentation here to get started. You will need to download all the SDKs and build tools and the drivers for your test devices. If you have everything set up right, it’s easy to deploy your game to the phone. And then it just depends on how you have your gameplay. You could set up some simple Matinee cameras for a flythrough, and then have the virtual joysticks for walking around. You would build it just like any other project.

hardyhutajaya · April 23, 2015, 12:44am

Hi all, I know an alternative which I am deploying tonight for my own project for a presentation next week.

With it you can still present in android with minimal loss in graphics quality, all you need is good internet connectivity.

Maybe I will post a quick video tutorial on how you can do it.

But gotta wait for a while as I have a day job to attend to

heartlessphil · April 23, 2015, 12:13pm

I’ve used Otoy’s X.OI website to stream the Unreal Paris demo from the cloud. It’s in beta but it works. I even ran it on my iphone. Also ran Blender and was able to render stuff on my phone lol. Basically you upload your app on their site and you can stream it from there. They run it on good computers. You can even give your client a url/code they can use to stream the app from your account. It won’t be free but it’s really not expensive…3-4$ per hour I think. Beta offer I think 100 mins for free!

hardyhutajaya · April 23, 2015, 12:48pm

Came back from work only to realize that my mic is not working. No video tuts i guess. Lol.

Anyways i use Amazon Appstream.
The first 20 hours is free every month and subsequently its $1.50/hr or somewhere near there.

All you have to do after deploying it is to install the app on your android tablet and get the link from appstream and you are good to go.

Its not too shabby if you have a good internet connection.

heartlessphil · April 23, 2015, 1:39pm

I will give it a try! thanks for the tip!

asmithey · March 2, 2016, 9:11pm

I would like to deploy my arch viz project to android. But I am having trouble understanding the all the prerequisites to get my files to package to android. I tried to install AndroidWorks-1R1-windows.exe but I received errors about virtual studio not being installed. I have a moto x gen 2 phone. Any advice how to get the process started would be great.

Thanks